A love story like no other

When PeopleAsia’s features editor Alex Vergara’s mother Gilda (nee Yatco) was breathing her last, she was already in the arms of an angel — her caregiver, Janine.

Janine Linaza and Monique Sulayao, both 30, have always been referred to as “Mommy’s angels” by Alex. Best friends from Surigao del Sur, they ventured into Manila in 2018 upon the recommendation of a friend and were fortunate to find a second home in the Vergara household.

All-around kasambahays, they were a quick study. Aside from learning how to cook Mommy Gilda and Alex’s favorite dishes, they were caring Florence Nightingales to the former, an octogenarian who was a cancer survivor as well.

“Tawagin ninyo akong Mommy,” Gilda, a widow and a mother of three (Alex, Farida and Ronnie) told Janine and Monique. In turn, she called them, “anak.”

Aside from assisting her in her daily needs and accompanying her every Sunday to the resting place of her late husband Vicente, Janine and Monique were also Mommy Gilda’s stylists. Thus, if you would peruse Alex’s posts in the last couple of years, Mommy Gilda was always well-coiffed, with matching red lipstick and well-defined eyebrows. When her hands started to shake because of Parkinson’s disease, she would tell her angels, “Anak, kilayan n’yo naman ako.” Even to Mommy Gilda, “kilay is life” and her angels happily obliged.

Janine and Monique slept in the same room as Mommy Gilda, and would get up in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning when the latter needed help to go to the toilet. And with Alex always in pursuit of a scoop and a story (especially before Zoom interviews), and Farida and Ronnie living abroad, the two house helpers were Mommy Gilda’s constant companion and crutch.

“Huwag n’yo kami iiwanan ni Alex, ha?” she would often ask the girls.

Taken during New Year’s Eve, their last happy moments together. Unbeknownst to Alex, he was already COVID-19 positive. On Jan. 3, Mommy Gilda and Monique also tested positive. On Jan. 5, she was rushed to the hospital and passed away two weeks later.

“Hindi kami uuwi Mommy habang nandito ka,” Janine and Monique would assure her. “Mahal namin kayo.”

Alex says that even when Mommy Gilda started showing signs of early dementia, she would never raise her voice at her angels, or be short-tempered with them. In times when Mommy Gilda had to go on a soft diet, Janine or Monique would process her meals in the family’s trusty blender and spoon-feed her. Kindness begets kindness, is how Alex sums up the halo of love that enveloped Mommy and her angels.

Alex says that Janine and Monique did for Mommy Gilda what he and his siblings, because of the nature of their jobs and the location of their residences, couldn’t do for her on a daily basis.

“Saludo ako sa kanila,” says Alex. “They got more than they signed up for. But they stayed on.”

She said ‘Yes’

In early January, Mommy Gilda, Alex and Monique tested positive for COVID-19. Alex was crestfallen because he was so proud to have shielded his mother from the virus from Day One.

When his mother needed to be hospitalized, Alex thought that Monique, being COVID-positive and asymptomatic, would be the logical choice to be her bantay. Monique said “yes” in a heartbeat. But health protocols in the hospital dictated otherwise, and the responsibility fell on Janine’s lap.

She said yes, too. “Buo ang loob ko,” she recalled to me. Even if she knew she was risking her own life caring for a COVID-positive patient in a place where she might also catch other infections, she said yes.

“Janine did it without question. Laban lang. Buwis buhay si Janine, knowing fully well that she could catch the virus,” says Alex gratefully. Why did she readily say “yes”?

“Kasi parang Mommy ko na rin siya,” replied Janine when I called her to condole with her, curious myself about her self-sacrifice for someone who was not of her flesh and blood.

Goodbye, Mommy

As she lay there, “gasping for breath, bloated from the cocktail of medicines given to her that seem to be of little help,” Alex beheld his beloved mother one last time from a video shared by Janine through her mobile phone. Janine was Alex, Farida and Ronnie’s last link to their mother.

Alex recalls he was “dumbfounded and in disbelief.”

Mommy Gilda succumbed to pneumonia on Jan. 19. She was 85. Janine remembers asking her a few hours before she gasped her last if she had already eaten and Mommy Gilda nodded. Janine caressed her arm and held her hand. She was never lonely and alone in her hospital room. Till her last breath, she was loved.

Janine was also the last person apart from the hospital staff to have a last look at Mommy Gilda. One of the saddest realities about a loved one dying from the virus is that family members are not allowed in the same room to say their final farewells.

“So, after my mother Gilda died, they immediately wrapped her body and put it in a body bag never to be seen in person by any of us except for her angel-bantay. Her body was then placed in the hospital morgue where a few hours later, an undertaker took it to the funeral home for cremation the next day,” narrates Alex.

With Janine, who was with Mommy Gilda to ‘the bitter end,’ during the former’s 30th birthday on Dec. 19. A month later, Mommy Gilda would succumb to pneumonia after catching COVID-19.

“It’s going to take a while for our hearts to heal, but that time will come,” shares Alex of the grief he and his siblings, Farida and Ronnie, feel.

“But like anyone who has lost a loved one knows, especially a beloved parent, child, spouse, or even best friend, there will always be a hole in your heart that nothing and no one can ever fill for as long as you live. You simply move forward, wounded and hurting until time blunts the pain. But try as it might, it would never fully heal that wound, which on occasion will still throb, ache and, even after nearly a lifetime, even bleed. It’s something we the walking wounded simply learn to live and cope with. Bye, Mommy! You will go on living in our hearts and through the very lives we lead.”

On the final day of the novena prayers for Mommy Gilda, which friends and relatives were able to join via Zoom, Alex and his siblings asked Janine and Monique to say a few words.

The two simply choked on their words, and bowed their heads, their shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

“There’s a miracle that brings us acceptance, imparts wisdom, gives strength, courage and peace,” Alex says in hindsight, then adds with affection, “and there’s the miracle (that) sends us an unseen guiding hand and pairs of extra hands that make the task of caring for our loved ones more manageable and less fraught with anxiety, stress and plain physical exhaustion. I wouldn’t have managed without these angels. When you feel you’re at the end of your rope, God, in His infinite mercy and wisdom, finds a way for you through other people.”

Janine and Monique received many offers for employment, in case they needed it, after Mommy Gilda passed on.

Though Alex has asked both of them, or at least one of them, to stay on, both Janine and Monique say they plan to return to their hometown and care, this time, for their own mothers.

Till then, Alex treasures their company. Perhaps, in Janine’s loving, caring eyes before she passed on, Mommy Gilda already saw the face of God.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.)